I have a draft post that I started, oh a couple of weeks ago, called “Ten Things I Have Learned in the First Week Home with My Son.” A mix of the tender and the humorous, the pretty and the very very stinky.

Except that one of the things on that list is ArtSweet’s first rule of baby: the minute you have time to even start to line up two words to make a sentence, someone – baby, cat, or partner – will need your attention immediately. I will put that post up eventually, hopefully within the scope of the first month and not the first year. But what’s on my mind tonight is a little more serious.

I’m sitting at the keyboard, nursing a pint of ice cream and a glass of white wine because the thought of hot food is revolting after an hour and a half of going up and down and over this shoulder and over that shoulder with a very hot and sticky baby who Did Not Want to Sleep even though he was very very tired.

I stuck it out, even when my arms ached, and I wanted to just put the baby down and let him cry until he cried himself hoarse or preferably to sleep. I was tempted to just call out on the baby monitor: “mama to mommy, come in mommy, please send back-up,” but I didn’t. I wanted to prove that I could do it, that I really was real mom material, since when I came home from work today, Pepito just glanced at me, turned back to Pili and launched his 100 megawatt five and a half tooth smile straight at her. Jealousy with a chaser of self-doubt. What am I doing wrong? Does he know I’m not legally his mom yet? Why doesn’t he love me the way he did yesterday? Mind you, the sharing of the baby has gotten easier since the high-pressure days of our trips to visit him: as Pili says, I think we’re both realizing there’s more than enough baby to go around.

But sometimes I still feel like we get stuck in power struggles over what we think the baby wants. He’s hot. He wants the fan. He’s constipated, that’s why he can’t sleep. Have you given him a bottle yet? Of course, I’ve given him a bottle. He threw it on the couch, spilling nasty smelling formula everywhere*, arched his back and started howling. Would you like to try?

And that’s when I wish we had roles to play. That we were a mom and dad, old-school-like. Where mother knows what’s right for baby and dad bumblingly follows along. I’d even take the dad role, if I could be happy or comfortable in it. But we’re a team with two leaders and no followers. And a very hot sticky baby who is finally, finally asleep. For now.

And let me forestall any “adam and eve, not adam and steve” bullshit. Having two moms who adore him? Who crash into each other like a pair of outfielders with their eyes on the ball to get to him when he cries? That’s just all good for this most of the time very happy baby.

*There’s no need for mechanical bulls or “breast is best” lectures – I’m convinced that making pregnant women smell a bottle of formula would triple breast feeding rates in this country. Especially a half-drunk, didn’t have time to dump it down the drain before I left for work, so it’s been fermenting in the hot kitchen all day bottle of formula.